At 8 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 terrorists sat in four U.S. commercial airliners, culminating five years of al Qaeda planning.

What the terrorists did that day exposed weaknesses in a trillion-dollar, decade-long program to protect the United States, the plan designed to shift the country away from the old Cold War world to a new world order.

"The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11," by lawyer John Farmer, is not a pointless retelling of that day's events. It is an important correction to 2004's "9/11 Commission Report," which Farmer helped write. In his new book, he uses newly declassified documents to make the strong case that the 9/11 Commission Report is erroneous in many of its key findings.

The new book relies heavily on newly released transcripts as various air control agencies dealt with four hijacked commercial aircraft that had their transponders turned off and deviated from their course over a 90-minute period.

To publish these transcripts in the most effective fashion possible, Farmer writes a narrative that tells events first in "years," followed by "months," "days," "hours" and "seconds," telescoping the action into a compelling drama.

The air controller conversations were not available for the 2005 commission report because they were still classified for purposes of the ongoing trial of the so-called 20th terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui.

When Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general, begins quoting the transcripts at length, the taped conversations are disarming in their humanity. The stress, the disbelief, the mounting realizations, the confusion, the panic, the fear, the frustration and the courage combine for a tense, gripping narrative.

Just as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency did not come together to add up their partial information on the 19 terrorists before 9/11, the FAA and NORAD could not produce a useful response to the use of commercial airliners as bombs. Their protocols were designed to act on traditional hijackings, not suicide missions.

In a way, the air control agencies can be forgiven. They did the best they could as one airliner after another crashed into their targets in New York and Washington, D.C., plus the one downed by passengers in Pennsylvania.

What is not forgivable are the numerous lies top federal government and military officials told the American public in the days, months and years after 9/11.

For example, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed the military had been positioned to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, before it reached the nation's capital, had not the passengers stormed the cockpit and downed the aircraft.

That's a whopper that then-Vice President Dick Cheney repeated several times, too. The truth, as revealed by the transcripts, is that the military did not even know United 93 had been hijacked until it already had crashed. The FAA knew for more than 30 minutes but failed to notify the military.

The 9/11 Commission and the public also were shielded from the fact that air controllers were reporting that American Airlines Flight 11, which originated in Boston, was bearing down on Washington when, in fact, it already had crashed into the north tower of New York's World Trade Center.

The American public also was told repeatedly that military pilots had been approved by President Bush to shoot down hijacked aircraft. No such decision was recorded while the hijacked aircraft were still in the air.

As the Bush administration decided to hide behind lies, it also chose not to learn any lessons. Toward the end of "The Ground Truth," Farmer argues that's why the federal response in 2005 to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans misfired so badly, leading to unnecessary loss of life.

Even after the creation of the U.S. Homeland Security Department, top officials remained too isolated from the rank-and-file of their agencies. In their bubbles, they only talk to each other, often passing erroneous information, Farmer demonstrates.

"The Ground Truth" ultimately is maddening. The federal government's structure, especially the intelligence and defense commands, remains too rigid. Uncooperative bureaucracies, geared to their own specific turfs, are too slow to change. The deception could happen again.